Early June update

As sometimes happens, there hasn’t been any actual event to report on regarding Lexi, nothing big that has made us run to this blog to report on. So this is just a general update.

Lexi will be a whole 10 months old next week. She is growing so fast. In May, her progress was remarkable. Fortunately, my (the Padre) grandparents were here on a visit to see all of it. By May 1, she had finally gotten coordinated and had mastered crawling and started to move around on her own. But almost immediately, with some willing helpers around, she also wanted to start walking. Especially Lolo (grandpa) spent a lot of time holding her up by her arms so she could start walking around.

By the last week or so of May, she was starting to pull herself up onto things – the coffee table, the side of the bathtub, the footboard of the bed, etc. And by early June, she had learned to return from this standing position to sitting on the floor again and even to squat, while still holding on with one hand, to pick something up.

During May she also fearlessly decided to start climbing stairs as well. Nobody ever showed her how to do this, but one day she was crawling along toward the two stairs from the living room to the dining room, and without stopping or even hesitating, she lifted up her arms and legs and climbed them! She must have keenly observed where the stairs are and what happens on them every time we carried her up and down them. So it wasn’t long until she was crawling toward the big staircase, eager to ascend to the upper floors of our house. They don’t sell the typical baby gates (for doors or stairs) here, so we had to go to a furniture-making shop down the road and ask them to cut us a piece of plywood that we now use to block the bottom of the stairs.

In terms of her disposition, she is still a very happy baby. She often chatters away during the course of the day with a lot of different noises and laughing. She is starting to wake up a little earlier than her usual wake-up time at 7:00, but often she will entertain herself with a variety of noises until we’re ready to wake up. And, best of all, she is starting to sleep through the night. Most nights now we can count on her to not wake up, although she sometimes does and makes a few noises but seems to put herself back to sleep.

Thanks mostly to Grandma Bradway, she learned “Patty Cake” and now starts clapping whenever you say those words. For a few weeks now, she has known how to wave, first when someone said “bye-bye,” but now I think she does it when people say “hi” as well. And she can lift her hands above her head when someone says, “so big!”

Of course we are amazed at this rapid progress and very proud of her as well.